I just got off the phone with Eric Hesse from TriMet and he confirmed that a cyclist was involved in a collision with a MAX train at 4:08pm today.
According to Josh Collins with TriMet Operations Communications, a cyclist riding northbound on SW 9th ran into the second car of a two-car MAX train that was headed west east on SW Yamhill (map).

Collins says the cyclist sustained superficial, non life-threatening injuries, never lost consciousness (even though he was reportedly not wearing a helmet) and was taken to a hospital for evaluation.

The initial tip I received about this story differs from TriMet’s official report. Here’s the tip I received:

“The MAX train just hit a biker at 9th & Yamhill. He seems to be alive but he’s coughing up blood. Witnesses have sketchy details, they say the biker was going up 9th and crossed in front of the train.”

Other than that, I have not heard directly from any witnesses on the scene or from the cyclist. I’ll update this post if/when I receive further information about the incident.

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NOTE: We love your comments and work hard to ensure they are productive, considerate, and welcoming of all perspectives. Disagreements are encouraged, but only if done with tact and respect. If you see a mean or inappropriate comment, please contact us and we'll take a look at it right away. Thank you — Jonathan

So, is it true about the bike going northbound? If so, that’ll make two crashes and one death in less than a week.

What can and should we do to get the information across that wrong-way riding is the most dangerous thing you could ever do on a bike? I usually shout out “Wrong way, pal” to the offender, but maybe that’s not enough.

It does seem like this is the second case of a cash involving a cyclist riding the wrong way. Just last week I saw three unlit (and I think un-helmeted) cyclists riding the wrong way on a one way street. After living in Corvallis for years, where cyclists don’t seem to understand that bike lanes HAVE a direction, I had thought that this was a non-issue in Portland; but I seem to have been proven wrong.

It’s basically impossible to be hit by the MAX unless you are being extremely careless. It’s not like those things can swerve in and out of lanes. They’re fixed on a track and only go through intersections when they have the right of way. If this guy was cycling the wrong way then obviously he wouldn’t have any visible traffic light/signal to let him know if oncoming traffic was coming from eastbound/westbound. If the cyclist was indeed cycling the wrong way he deserves a hefty fine.

A moron on a bike collides with the second car of a MAX train during normal operations. Said idiot was traveling the wrong way on a one way street but that little road rule certainly does not apply to riders as any reader of BikePortland will tell you. Rules that trample upon our beloved bikey culture and freedoms need not be followed.

Anonymous tipster with pro-bike / anti-everything else bias lets Jonathan know about the incident but embellishes the facts to make the incident both life threatening and clearly Tri-Met’s fault. Jonathan prints a responsible update with more real facts however, the two wheeled peanut gallery starts spinning yarns about three car trains traveling the wrong way during rush hour while ignoring traffic signals.

And we wonder why the car crowd has such an easy time painting us with a big can of Krylon High Gloss Whacko? Please keep this thread going! I anxiously await various theories blaming global warming, Mayor Potter, Officers Barnum and Balzer, the Bavarian Illuminati, Tri-Met, and the Freemasons while absolving our intrepid two wheeled revolutionary brother.

If there was only a huge taxpayer funded educational billboard turned backwards on SW 9th…

Wow Brad, for someone who requested “civil discussion” involving “constructive feedback” only a couple of threads back, you sure are being a douche now.

Anyway, Dropped and Klixi are right — there is no way this could be anything other than the fault of an extremely stupid cyclist. But I’m looking forward to BURR explaining to us how we’re blaming the victim again. Getting the word out that it’s dangerous to ride the wrong way is getting easier and easier every day, isn’t it?

I think the concern a few threads back was more against licensing than education.

I’m all for education. And unless there were extenuating circumstances, apparently this cyclist hasn’t seen the “Get Real – MAX weighs 55 tons” signs around downtown. One thing Tri-Met has been really good about is advertising the dangers of being hit by their vehicles. I’m sure that the cost of manpower, time and lost revenue from schedule affects due to accidents has encouraged this.

And we wonder why the car crowd has such an easy time painting us with a big can of Krylon High Gloss Whacko?

It doesn’t take much effort when people not only engage in stupidly dangerous law-breaking behavior, but then, to top that off, people in the community itself are quick to chastise the remainder of the community as nutjobs whose so-called values obscure the most simple forms of reason, logic, and common sense. The “I’m not like them! I’m one of the good ones!” attitude is not a good way to command the respect of either the cyclists who don’t know or don’t care that there are rules that need to be followed or the non-cycling public at large.

You are contributing nothing to this discussion. Absolutely nothing. Who has defended wrong-way riders? Anybody? Anybody? Didn’t think so.

But I bet you’ll be ready to defend the woman who honked her horn at me because she wanted to make a right turn off Main St two seconds before the light went green. I was in her way because I didn’t blow the traffic light, because I didn’t want to tarnish the bike community’s image, of course.

Yes Logan, those are cases where people did defend them in the context of the fatal wrong way story.

But really, for this story, no one defended the guy who collided with the MAX. In fact, there was no shortage of people who immediately called him an idiot or some variation on that theme. Yet Brad chose this story to be inflammatory and claim that people were defending wrong way riders when none were doing so.

Given that, perhaps Brad’s comment would have been slightly more appropriate if it were offered alongside the defense comments in the other story.

I did not witness the actual accident, but I arrived shortly after. After reading this post I think it looked a little worse than it was.
When I showed up, he was sitting upright in the middle of the car lane near the tracks, conscious but certainly out of it. He seemed very dazed. He had a little blood on his forehead and a lot more on his lips. I don’t know if he was just bleeding or indeed coughing up blood.
After ten minutes or so he began vomiting pretty intensely. After five minutes or so he sort of just started dry heaving loudly. He seemed very disoriented which is understandable after running into a train, but I felt as if there was more to it. Like maybe he had been drinking. That could be a false assumption on my part though. The meds later cut his shirt off and I noticed a couple scratches on his stomach. Handlebar scrapes I’m guessing. They did put a neck brace on him and loaded him onto a gearnie (spelling?) and into the ambulance.
As far as the bike goes it sustained fairly minimal damage. A tacoed front rim and a crooked seat. Not much of a lose. It seemed like a Wal-Mart special.

Yes, in the context of a person being hit and KILLED and the driver DRIVING OFF and then hiding, and ditching the car while the passenger (or was she the driver?) refuses to cooperate, then and pretty much only then it doesn’t matter that the rider was riding the wrong way , because he still would have been in the bike lane regardless of his direction of travel, which is one place where a car driver should be looking for bikes, especially in FRONT of them.

I have an honest question for everyone out there, I just hope it doesn’t come across as flamebait.

So no one supports going the wrong way on a bike, right? No one wants to change the laws to allow us cyclists to do that, right? So why do so many people support changing the laws to allow us to go through stop signs? It seems that is nearly as dangerous.

I don’t think slowing down and looking for crossing traffic and then coasting through an intersection is any more dangerous than coming to a complete stop and then proceeding across the intersection. The key of course is that you have to actually look, (you know, pay attention to your surroundings) which it seems that a lot of people both in cars and on bikes seem to have trouble doing. Nobody wants to legalize blowing stop signs like they are not even there.

For the record anytime I encounter someone in the bike lane, I tell them “You are going the WRONG WAY.”

So, I am wondering, because so many posters are saying that they make a point of telling wrong-way cyclists that they are going the wrong way, am I the only one to whom the inevitable, invariable, universal and, frankly, frightening, response is to tell me that I am a bitch, that I should go f**k myself, and to threaten me with bodily harm? It is for this reason that I no longer feel safe telling those wrong way folks that they are creating a hazard. And before you ask – yes, I was polite and non-confrontational in my attempts to draw their attention to the hazard the were creating . . . I am not exactly a threatening presence, even if I tried to be . . .(maybe that’s my problem)

My guess is that the folks who are telling the truth probably either have a *very* commanding presence or are just good at shrugging off the insults and empty threats. Maybe both. I’d guess that about 2/3 of the folks I’ve called out on such issues have reacted with hostility and this is speaking as a guy who’s 6′ tall, medium build, and has a pretty loud voice.

Where does the in-progress correction need to come from, then? Cops! For some reason, the *threat* of there being very real and immediate consequences that *don’t* involve waking up in the hospital registers with some people, whereas from other folks like you and me, people get pissed because they’re being told they’re wrong by a seeming know-it-all and it makes them feel bad.

Which is not to say don’t take action yourself, but hey, I know *I* pick and choose who I tell it to.

my impression is that this guy, and the wrong-way guy killed last week, may have (had) a touch of mental illness. while it’s important to educate cyclists about the pretty much constant danger they’re in, i have my doubts about whether that would have helped these specific guys.

is there anything we can do to improve the safety of people who biologically can’t think very clearly? maybe it seems like a tangent, but biking incidents reported on bikeportland have made me really aware of how broadly having no access to preventive health care affects people. i don’t have a solution, but i think we’d all do well to keep our fellow cyclists in mind next time we have a chance to vote for or against better health care coverage.